


Tired

by Afueras



Category: Bandom, Placebo
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 06:39:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Afueras/pseuds/Afueras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A generic, tiny stub of a Placebo ficlet about drugs and lovers and not much at all, really. Hints of Molsdal, and a good amount of directionless rambling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tired

**Author's Note:**

> To be honest, I've never been pleased with this one. It's sort of a title-less snippet that has had several endings in the past, but none ever seemed to fit. I've stretched it for pages hoping to find a proper conclusion, but it never came. This was one of the first Placebo ficlets I ever wrote and it's sort of stuck with me over time, ending or no, so what better to be my first posting on here? Enjoy.

The morning sun slanted through the blinds, making stripes across the narrow bed and its cramped occupant.

Stefan turned uneasily in his sleep, mumbling nonsense to himself and curling up further with the vague intention of drawing his feet back under the covers, where they stuck out due to his impossible height. He had meant to upgrade to a full-sized bed for years, but never seemed to get around to it.

It didn’t really matter, he reasoned. It wasn’t like he had anyone to share it with.

The morning held a chill too sharp for October, and somewhere deep in his sleep-fogged mind Stefan made a mental note to see if the heater even still worked.

He had just moved on from that vague thought and was drifting back into nothingness when the first obnoxious rapping sounded on the door to his flat.

Knowing exactly who it was, the tall man shifted over and buried his face into the pillow, groaning. The knocks grew louder, and turned into pounding. “ _Steffie_ , _open the dooooor_ ” he heard faintly, in that familiar nasal whine, but this time it was punctuated by… sobbing? The knocks suddenly stopped, and he sat straight up, listening intently. There came a muffled thump from the hall, followed by silence.

In seconds, he bolted out of bed and struggled into the first clothes that met his hands, stumbling bleary-eyed to the door. Flinging it open, Stefan’s eyes took a moment to adjust to what he was seeing.

Brian was curled up in a heap against the wall, next to the door. His bloodshot eyes were open wide, startled by the door’s sudden opening, and the pupils were tiny pinpricks in a sea of murky blue. Tears and grime streaked his face. His lips were parted, bitten raw and pale and largely free of lipstick. The eye makeup he must have been wearing at the start of the night was smeared in huge black circles, streaked by rough hands and dragged down his cheeks in thick trails by the tears which still leaked steadily.

He looked absolutely pathetic, sick and tired and strung-out, fingers twitching where they clutched at his abdomen, not dressed in nearly enough clothes. Bruises littered his papery skin.

Within seconds Stefan was reaching down, grabbing him, shaking him, digging his long fingers into the thin shoulders and cursing what’s-his-name, the current boyfriend, for letting this happen. _Making_ this happen. Stefan knew Brian was too vain to allow himself to look like this, and Stefan had seen him at his very worst. He had held Brian’s hair as he puked pure vodka, picked him up when Brian called from random convenience stores at two in the morning where we had been dumped by drunken flings, and watched him consistently refuse to ingest anything that left him in a condition to drive.

He’d even force-fed him once or twice, when Brian’s stomach growled too loud to ignore and the bones in his jaw shifted visibly as he talked.

He’d talked him through brutal withdrawals and harsh breakups, gone with him to take STD tests and tended the black eyes he got when he wore too much mascara or leopard-print tights in public. He’d dragged him out of violent mosh pits by one skinny arm, heaving him over his shoulder to override his drunken resistance.

He had zipped Brian’s dresses and confiscated his pills, tended his wounds and tended his fragile ego, and through it all, Brian never cried. Not once.

He would scream curses until his voice broke, or fall into dark-eyed, stretched-out silences where Stefan could never tell where his mind would go next. Sometimes he would give whimpers and bury his face in Stefan’s neck and promise to stop.

Brian Molko never cried, though. Not until now.

“What did he do?” Stefan snapped, losing his calm demeanor completely for the first time in years. “Where does he live, and _what did he do_?”

Tears still cutting tracks in the coating of grime on his cheeks, Brian keened into Stefan’s shoulder, “I don’t know Steffie, I’m _tired_. I want to sleep. I want to sleep and I _can’t_.” He rubbed his ebony head into Stefan’s old tee shirt and sighed. Suddenly realizing the tightness of his grip, Stefan released Brian’s arms and cradled him instead, one hand caressing the greasy hair and the other supporting the smaller man’s sagging torso. He ignored the scandalized looks from the old hag two doors down, who was peering suspiciously around the doorframe. Deciding they would all be better off if she refrained from calling the police, he hauled Brian up by the armpits and half-carried him inside.

After sitting him down on the couch, the tall man went and dragged the blankets off his bed to wrap around Brian’s shaking body. Stefan slung an arm around the bony shoulders and opened his mouth to speak, before seeing the look on the other man’s face. Instead, he reached for the remote and turned the television on.

He mindlessly flipped to a channel showing black-and-white movies of the type he knew Brian liked to watch after a long night, all fucked-out, looking like he had just stepped out of the screen as he lounged and smoked in the half-dark.

They stared at the screen with the volume off, but Stefan knew Brian wasn’t watching. He could see it in the tense lines of his body and the vacant look in his eyes, feel it in his hands which trembled where they were caught inside Stefan’s larger one.

After a few minutes, he began to relax, to wilt slowly onto Stefan’s chest, where his head finally came to rest, eyes reflecting the flickering screen for a few minutes before they drifted shut.

Stefan closed his eyes as well, leaning his head back and breathing slowly.

He was tired too.


End file.
